


What If

by Sara_Ellison



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:19:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sara_Ellison/pseuds/Sara_Ellison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I. When Dean's father goes missing on a hunt, he doesn't even consider going to Sam for help.<br/>II. Mary Winchester only had one child.<br/>III. There was never a fire in the Winchesters' house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Dean's father goes missing on a hunt, he doesn't even consider going to Sam for help.

Dean's father goes missing on a hunt. Dean considers calling family friends, Bobby or Caleb or Pastor Jim, for help, but decides against it. He can handle this. He doesn't even consider reconnecting with his brother; Sam made it clear three years ago when he left for Stanford that he wanted nothing more to do with his family, and Dean is content to let him be.

He tracks Dad to California, where he encounters a lovely young lady with homicidal tendencies and an unfortunate condition of incorporeality. He reunites her with her children, whom she had killed, and she's at rest. It's all really touching, but Dean is frustrated; his father's trail is confusing and difficult to follow.

The clues seem to point east--kind of obviously, since he's in California--and Dean is just setting out again when his phone rings. It's a number he doesn't recognize, but the area code is local.

"Mr. Winchester?" a voice asks. It's cool and feminine, and distinctly unhappy. "Dean Winchester?"

"Yeah?" Dean answers, immediately on guard. Who has his name?

"I called Sam's emergency contact number, and the voice mail message gave your name and this number. Are you his brother?"

Something is wrong, very wrong. Why is Dad forwarding his business to Dean? "Yeah, I am," he mutters, mind racing.

"I've very sorry, Mr. Winchester. There's been an accident. A fire. Your brother...I'm so sorry, but Sam was killed."

The phone falls from Dean's nerveless fingers. It lands on the floor mat upside-down and folds itself shut. Dean swerves onto the shoulder, clambers out of the car and throws up.

After the funeral, he finds out more details. Sam was living with his girlfriend, a pretty blonde named Jessica; their apartment was where the fire originated. Both of them were killed; they had to be identified by dental records. No one else in the building was even hurt.

Dean remembers the fire he saved Sam from when they were just kids, the one that killed their mother. He couldn't save Sam this time. For a brief moment, he wonders--if he had gone to Sam for help finding Dad, gotten him out of the apartment or even just been nearby when the fire started...but there's no use wondering. It's too late. Dad, on the other hand, could still be alive, and Dean resolves to find him, one way or another.

When he does, he has the horrible task of telling his father about Sam. Dad screams at him, demanding to know why Dean didn't call and tell him, so Dad could have at least gone to the funeral.

Dean manages to keep his cool, just barely. "I tried," he bites out. "You haven't exactly been easy to reach."

Dad freezes for a moment, and his face falls. "You're right," he says. "I'm sorry." He pulls Dean in for a hug. "I'm so sorry," he says again, and then he breaks down.

They catch up with the yellow-eyed demon, and Azazel catches up with them right back. Dean survives the crash, against all odds; shortly afterward, his father dies of unexpected complications from the gunshot wound in his leg where Dean shot him with the Colt, when Azazel was possessing him. Gutted, Dean burns his father's body. The Colt has gone missing. Dean suspects that his father made a deal for Dean's life, but he can't prove anything.

He spends a while at Bobby's, rebuilding his car. A job introduces him to a milf named Ellen, her daughter Jo, and a brilliant MIT-dropout with a mullet named Ash. Dean tells Ash about the yellow-eyed demon, about the way Mom and Sam died; Ash finds half a dozen kids who, like Sam, survived fires in their nurseries. Further investigation leads to the realization that these kids have freaky powers--mind control, telekinesis, precognition. It's not natural, clearly demonic in nature. It doesn't take long to track them down and end them.

Azazel shows up in one of Dean's dreams not too long after that, raging impotently about being robbed of his general. Dean laughs in his face and promises to find some other way to kill him, or get the Colt back somehow.

Bobby, poring over some old maps one day, finds something weird; a series of railway lines, laid out like a devil's trap. At the centre, they discover, is a Devil's Gate. Upon examination, it's clear that the Colt is meant to act as a key to open it. Azazel has the Colt, but without his psychic minions, he can't cross the iron lines surrounding the Gate. The door to Hell never opens.

Life goes on. Dean gets used to hunting on his own; he can always call Bobby or Ash if he needs research done, and they always come through for him. Sometimes he calls Bobby just to chat. Bobby tells him about some Biblical apocrypha he's been reading; there's a demon called Lilith, who is apparently a real nasty piece of work. Dean's glad she's still trapped in Hell, and will remain there for the foreseeable future.

Hunting alone is really different from hunting with Dad, and Dean misses him terribly. He understands, intellectually, why Dad would make a deal with a demon for Dean's life, but he's not sure he forgives him for it. He wonders if he could have made a deal to bring back Sam, after the fire; at the time, he never even considered it, and he thinks now, it's probably too late. Besides, if he'd made a deal for Sam, then Dean would end up in Hell, and that wouldn't help anyone.

Bobby's gotten weirdly into the whole Bible-study thing lately, particularly Revelations. When he and Dean talk on the phone, Bobby tells him about the Apocalypse and Lucifer's Cage, and the 66 seals that have to be broken. "The first seal will be broken when a righteous man spills blood in Hell," Bobby tells him.

"So until that happens, there's no chance of the Apocalypse? Lucifer's not getting out of his Cage?" Dean asks. "That's good to know."

"Yup, that's about the size of it," Bobby agrees. "What I don't get is what a righteous man would be doing in Hell in the first place. If he was so righteous, wouldn't he go to Heaven?"

"Maybe if he made a deal," Dean says, thinking of his father. It would never happen, he knows; nothing could induce John Winchester to hurt another soul, Hell-torture or not.

Dean has finished up a job in Nevada and is taking a well-deserved break. He hands the keys to his precious Impala to a valet and stands on the sidewalk, bathed in neon light and breathing the dry, sin-scented air. _Vegas, baby!_

Over the noise and bustle of the Strip, Dean hears something like wings and feels a rush of air at his back. He turns to find a man behind him, a little too close inside Dean's personal space. The man's got artfully messy dark hair and strikingly blue eyes; he's wearing a trenchcoat open over a rumpled-looking suit.

"I'm sorry," he tells Dean sadly. "I had to stop it."

"Stop what?" Dean asks. He looks behind him to see if maybe the stranger is talking to someone else, because he's not making much sense. When he looks back, the other man is gone.

That was weird, but Dean shrugs it off. It's 2010, he's in Las Vegas, and Dean intends to live tonight like the world is ending tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary Winchester only had one child.

Mary Winchester's second pregnancy ends in a miscarriage. She's devastated, of course, and so is John; secretly, though, a tiny part of her is relieved. The deal she made for John's life all those years ago can never be fulfilled now. The yellow-eyed demon can never get his hands on her second child.

Dean follows his father into the family business, and is a very skilled mechanic. Decades later, he barely remembers that he once almost had a little brother.

Jake opens the Devil's Gate and no one closes it again. Mary is the only one of the Winchesters who has a guess as to why the world's suddenly gone to shit, but she retired from hunting the night her parents died.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was never a fire in the Winchesters' house.

Mary goes to bed and sleeps like an angel. She never knows that Azazel is in the nursery, dripping demon blood into her son's mouth.

Sam is in his senior year at Stanford when the dreams start--disturbing, vivid dreams. He doesn't tell anyone about them. When he learns to move things with his mind, he doesn't tell anyone about that either; he tells them other things, though, and finds that they listen. They do whatever he tells them. After a truly boring and normal childhood, Sam is thrilled to discover he's special.

A man with crazy eyes shows up and introduces himself as Gordon. His smile doesn't reach his eyes, and Sam is expecting it when Gordon tries to kill him. He tells Gordon to leave and forget that Sam exists, and Gordon does.

Abruptly, Sam finds himself in a literal ghost town with a bunch of other psychics his own age. When they start dying, Sam quickly figures out it's kill or be killed. By this point, he's learned how to kill things by touching them, and it's easy to win this game.

The yellow-eyed man takes him to the middle of nowhere, gives him an antique pistol, and sends him across the railroad tracks. Sam slides the Colt into the keyhole and unlocks the Devil's Gate. There's no one to stop him. When the demons come flooding out, Azazel introduces Sam as their leader.

Lilith is among their number, and she doesn't like taking orders from Azazel, much less from Sam. Sam tries to appease her at first with a steady supply of baby blood, but eventually he gets tired of her constant bitching and kills her with a thought. No righteous man has spilled blood in Hell, though, so the first seal remains unbroken, and Lilith's death is largely insignificant. Lucifer's jailbreak will have to wait. Azazel has tried his pitch on the other Winchesters, but none of the rest of Sam's family seem inclined to make a deal that would send them to Hell.

The most unexpected part about leading a demon army is that Sam has groupies. His favorite is a little spitfire called Ruby. She's amazing in bed; after a while, he officially makes her his consort. It's a pretty sweet gig, overall.

It stops being sweet the day he turns around to find himself face-to-face with a rumpled-looking, blue-eyed, attractive man in a trenchcoat. He's standing a little too close to Sam, and he stares at him for a moment before saying sadly, "I'm sorry, Sam."

"Sorry for what? And how the fuck do you know my name?" Sam demands.

The blue-eyed stranger doesn't answer. He's joined by others, suddenly, appearing out of nowhere, an entire garrison of them; the air is thick with the sound of wings.

"Oh, shit," Ruby says, beside Sam. She sounds truly terrified. "Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit--they're not supposed to be real, they're a myth..."

"What is it, Ruby?" Sam asks, a little scared but not letting it show. Ruby is a badass motherfucker and if these guys are scaring _her_ , shit's about to hit the fan. "What are they?"

" _Angels_ ," she cries, throwing her hands over her face as though that will shield her from the blinding light.

Sam's last thought before the angels smite the shit out of everything is _Oh, fuck._


End file.
